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It’s not quite what it sounds like: the blocks are cubical, maybe fist-sized, and completely immobile, even if suspended in midair, unless affected by your upgradable block-manipulation gun, which, in its simplest form, just lets you pick the blocks up and place them elsewhere. So what does the game spend its time on once you’ve got a handle on its limited repertoire of space-manipulation? Block puzzles, mainly. The opening area has some stair-stepped walls that hint at an Escher-like variation in the direction of gravity, but that never happens. And that’s basically it as far as violations of physical law go. Then there’s the relatively trivial matter of walls/floors that appear or disappear as you near them. Early on, for example, there’s a door that slams shut whenever you look at it, and which you therefore have to walk through backwards. A more realistic game might use this to control NPC behavior, making enemies dodge when you aim at them and the like, but in the Myst-like solitude of Antichamber, it either controls more of those unnoticeable teleports I just mentioned, or affects the environment in more direct ways. Then there are innovations in the use of look-triggers: not just where you are, but which direction you’re facing can be important. But that’s a trick as old as Wizardry once you know it’s something that can happen, you just get into the habit of checking your tail once in a while. Some portals are obvious and highly visible, but one of the basic ways it disorients you is with inconspicuous one-way portals, or possibly just silent teleport triggers that send you to a place that looks exactly like where you teleported from until you try to go back the way you came in and realize it isn’t there any more. There are portals, of course, but we’re definitely used to thinking in terms of those by now. It really only has so many tricks, and once you’re used to them, well, it’s no longer the case that it doesn’t work by the rules you’re used to.

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Even when the floor crumbles and vanishes under you, and you fall down a very deep pit, friendly signage at the bottom reminds you that what you’ve really done is find a hidden passage.įor another thing, the “doesn’t work by the rules you’re used to” aspect doesn’t really last the full length of the game. Antichamber never really punishes you, except with puzzle-solver’s frustration. It might be interesting to compare the gaming habits of the people on either side.) But T4W at least tries to make things feel unsafe, pulls tricks like having things that chase you, punishing you for ever standing still, even while you’re still trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing.

(There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground. Not everyone’s in agreement about that, mind you comment threads about T4W tend to be split between people completely creeped out by its disorienting alienness and people who it completely left cold. The last game I played along similar lines was The 4th Wall, which I found extremely frightening. This is a game whose basic premise is that the world doesn’t work by the rules you’re used to. But it’s an interesting question because it’s a reasonable one. I’ll say right off that the answer is “No”. Browsing forums afterwards for stuff I missed, I came across an interesting question from someone who hadn’t played the game yet: “Is Antichamber scary?”

It strikes me that there’s a particular design problem to providing a sense of finality in a thoroughly abstract and unexplained environment Antichamber manages it largely through a longish final animation that communicates “massive forces unleashed”. It only takes a few hours to beat, leaving aside optional collection for completists. It’s a network of them, with obstacles you can’t overcome the first time you encounter them, Metroidvania-style, and enough loops and branches that you can actually get lost.

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The strongest way it differs from the formula established by Portal (and followed by Qube and Quantum Conundrum) is that it isn’t a linear series of puzzles. It’s purged of impurities like plot and humor, abandoning any pretense of setting, leaving just a gun for manipulating the environment in novel ways and a labyrinth of stark white corridors, illogically-connected and rendered in a deliberately non-photorealistic style to enhance the sense of unreality. Antichamber is distilled essence of Portal - by which I mean, it’s got the same underlying components, but with the flavor replaced with a chemical tang.

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